I’ve mentioned Emily Alta before, she’s my bestest Peace Corps buddy and she “ET’d” (Early Terminated) a few months ago because of a lot of things that were going terribly wrong in her site. But this week she’s back, for a limited time only, to make sure that one of the projects she started last year gets properly completed. It’s a clever art and culture exchange, where Emily took pictures of the kids in her village, and sent them back to a group of student artists in the US. The American students then painted the Mayan kids, and Emily brought all the paintings back for the Mayan kids as gifts, along with some T-shirts and a lot of personal messages and well-wishes from the American kids. In all, a very cool, touchy-feely project that effectively promotes the cultural exchange mission of the Peace Corps.

They say that Jimmy Carter is “the best EX-president we ever had.” I think Emily Alta is like the Jimmy Carter of Peace Corps Volunteers. Not only did she come back “off the clock” to properly complete this project she started almost a year ago, but she also continues to actively market our morrales for the Temux Mayan Artisans co-op, and she’s taking a pile of them back to the US for us. This helps our market deversity, since sometimes any one outlet can be slow…like the online Etsy store, which has seen ONE sale in the last few months. (Thanks Janine!)

Carter and Alta are both Georgians. Coincidence? Solo dios sabe.

While spending the weekend with Emily, we all got to talking about the various cultural challenges that Guatemalans face today: unwise spending habits, illiteracy, poor hygeine, irresponsible parenting, even simple things like drinking too much soda and coffee instead of water. But we realized that these things continue to occur in sectors of the American population, as well. My dad used to say, “No matter where you go, there you are.” Perhaps that is something to be learned from this whole experience, and brought home to be put to use in the US? Chris, Emily Alta’s friend, pointed us to the “Read a Book” video that was made as a public service announcement to black Americans, drawing awareness to the same issues I mentioned above. Check it out, it’s hilarious and really well done, but a bit vulgar, offensive if you take it the wrong way, and possibly NSFW depending on where you work.

After a great weekend spending time with Emily Alta, my Emily and I traveled the 5 hours back to our village to discover that two packages were waiting for us at the post office: a box of American-style snacks, and a box of children’s books in Spanish to read to the local kiddies. YAY, finally. My dad sent them two or three months ago, and I was starting to despair they would never arrive. As it was, the normal month-or-so of waiting on the Guatamalan postal system tripled due to some new policies by the government. First, we got a letter saying that our packages had been pulled from the mail queue by customs for inspection, and that we needed to go to Guatemala City to pick them up. Of course, they would happily put them BACK in the mail system for 150q. We’ve seen this extortion before, and as they know, we would rather pay the money than waste five times that amount (and four days travel) going to the capitol to get the package ourselves. But the new surprise is that all goods brought into Guatemala now are taxed at the commerical import rate, even if they are destined for personal use by international aid workers. A week after we paid the 150Q fine, we got ANOTHER letter, saying that now we needed to pay 343Q in taxes if we ever wanted to see our stuff. We sighed, paid, and then crossed our fingers that there would be no other fees.

We love getting care packages from friends and family, especially my Dad who makes really awesome ones, but I think we’re going to ask everyone to stop sending them, at least for the time being. It breaks my heart to say it, but we just can’t afford to pay the fees on this end. I’ll keep you posted of any changes in the policy here.